A familiar stranger in a strangely familiar land

It's a strange feeling to go back to where you used to live (especially your childhood home); you feel like a stranger in a familiar place, as if the place itself has moved on while somehow staying the same. But, of course, those surroundings haven’t changed, you are the one who has moved on and helped to redefine yourself; those old surroundings define who you were in the past.

It is even weirder to feel like you haven’t changed but your body has moved on without you. That's what Parkinson's has done to me; I'm a stranger in my own body. I have been trying to become acquainted with my new surroundings and crucially reacquainted with myself but my body looks at me suspiciously and I plead with it to give me back my identity.

My body, in particular the conscious control I have over it, forms the fundamental basis of who I am; when that control starts to go, I start to go and I end up perpetually running after myself in surroundings I don’t recognise. That's what Parkinson's feels like to me...